Managing Information Access to an Enterprise Information System Using J2EE and Services Oriented Architecture

96 Managing Information Access to an EIS Using J2EE and Services Oriented Architecture

5.1 J2EE Connector Architecture overview

The J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) defines a set of standards about how a

resource adapter provides connectivity to an EIS and how the system contracts

with an application server.

The set of contracts between the resource adapter and the application server

provides services to the resource adapter and maintains a plugable mechanism

when running in the application server.

There are currently two versions of the JCA specification. The JCA 1.0

specification only includes outbound communication and does not include life

cycle management and work management. The JCA 1.5 specification includes

inbound communication and the following system contracts:

򐂰 Transaction management

Involves the coordination of the application servers transaction manager and

the EIS transaction resource managers to provide transactional functionality

through the resource adapter.

򐂰 Connection management

Involves connection pooling and the framework for creating and managing

physical connections to the EIS.

򐂰 Life cycle management

Involves the start up and shut down functions of the resource adapter, and

provides timely and consistent contracts for these procedures.

򐂰 Work management

Allows the resource adapter to schedule and submit work tasks with the

application server. These work tasks can facilitate processes that involve

monitoring tasks.

򐂰 Security

Provides the resource adapter with features to enable security using

application server mechanisms.

Components that want to access information from the EIS can do so in two ways.

They can use the Common Client Interface (CCI) to make requests on the EIS,

which is referred to as an outbound communication. The component can also

allow the EIS to make inbound calls that send information from the EIS to the

component.

The CCI provides an API that the resource adapter can implement and extend,

which allows for clients to make remote function calls on the EIS. A client

component gets a connection to the EIS using a connection factory.